Community Participation and Sustainable Urban Development;

Application of City Development Strategy Approach

Maghsoudi, Rose*; Rasoolimanesh, S. Mostafa**

*Ph.D. in Urban Planning, & Researcher at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CA,

r.maghsoudi@alumni.ubc.ca ** Ph.D. Senior Lecturer, School of Hospitality, Tourism, &

Events, Faculty of Social Sciences and Leisure Management, Taylor's University, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate to what extent the level of community participation in

the process of planning of City Development Strategy (CDS) contributes to achieve (Sustainable

Urban Development (SUD) pillars. CDS is a strategic urban plan, which has been applied by many

cities in developing countries to achieve SUD. However, the level of achievements to SUD are

different. To address this objective, the current study has compared two CDSs, which have been

implemented in Qazvin city in Iran, in regard with taking into account the community participation

and sustainable urban development (SUP) pillars and assess the effect of community participation

to achieve SUD.

Introduction

City Development Strategy (CDS) is a participatory and strategic urban planning approach

that has been applied by many cities around the world to achieve sustainable urban development

(SUD) (Rasoolimanesh et al., 2014). However, the success of CDSs in achievement of SUD goals

are different, and are heavily dependent on the level of effective participation and building the

consensus among stakeholders (Conroy, 2006; Rasoolimanesh et al., 2014, 2015; Yigitcanlar &

Teriman, 2014).

SUD attempts to improve quality of life of citizens and was established to respond to 21st

century challenges which cities are facing on, such as; rapid population growth, urban poverty,

and social-spatial changes, in particular in developing world (Yigitcanlar & Teriman, 2014). The

cities in developing countries to achieve sustainability need to improve economic structure and

reduce poverty without damaging the environment and natural capital and inclusion of various

social groups human inhabitants, especially poor people (Sachs, 2015). SUD is a dynamic process

to contribute the cities in globalization era to address economic, social, and environmental

concerns (Shen et al., 2011). The balance between these aspects of SUD can be achieved by

applying effective participation of all levels of government, private sector and civil society (Saha

& Paterson, 2008; Sachs, 2015).

Therefore, this paper attempts to review two applied CDSs in Qazvin city, Iran, to compare

the role of effective community participation to achieve SUD. The first CDS of Qazvin was

prepared by the Imam Khomeini International University (or Qazvin University) and the Qazvin’s

municipality in 2006. However, a second CDS under the Urban Upgrading and Housing Reform

Program (UUHRP) task force co-jointed by the World Bank and the Ministry of Housing and

Urban Development (MHUD) of Iran was applied in 2007.

Research Method

A qualitative approach has been applied to address the research objective. This study

focused on the SUD, and the role of participation and consensus building among stakeholder in

the process of planning to improve consistency of urban plan with SUD principles. Two CDSs of

Qazvin city which were prepared by local authorities in 2006, and other CDS that it was prepared

in 2008 by Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD) of Iran has been compared in

two facets; taking into account the principles of SUD, and participation and consensus building of

stakeholders in the process of preparing of CDSs. The content and methodology of these two CDSs

have been analyzed using content analysis technique. The content of these two CDSs have been

analyzed in related to SUD principles, and the methodology has been analyzed to assess

participation of stakeholders to prepare these CDSs. The produced reports of these two CDSs have

been used to perform content analysis and address the research objectives.

Results and Conclusion

In this study, we have focused on analyzing the visions, strategies, and projects (action

plans or outcome of CDS) of the Qazvin City Development Strategies (CDS) plans in 2006 and

2008, respectively.

The results of analyzing city development strategies plan of the city of Qazvin (2006) have

shown, the city has several problems such as high population, lack of social services, poverty and

slum dwellings, urban mismanagement, absence of effective infrastructure and transportation, and

environmental degradation. The plan emphasized in the population growth as a main cause of the

existing shortcomings. In fact, this plan followed a comprehensive approach and reported sectorial

studies (social-cultural, urban poverty, urban economy, urban environment and geography, …).

To address these problem, the following strategies are suggested:

i) an integrated management, harmony, plan-oriented, capable and citizen-oriented.

ii) A sustainable, healthy, safe, and happy city.

iii) An active, capable, knowledge-oriented, and competitive city.

iv) A historical, identified, beautiful, attractive city for internal and external tourists.

v) A city for academic, research, and university activities in national and international

levels.

Furthermore, the results showed the first three most essential characterizes of an ideal city for

Qazvin would be:

i) To have an integrated, developmental, effective, professional, advanced, and

coordinated management with public participations by using all urban potentials and

capacities in the city.

ii) To create an industrial and transit center to show strong growth in the coming.

iii) To create a national or international academic city through a university technology

center, including citizens with rich culture and higher welfare.

Moreover, according to these essential characteristics, Qazvin main missions were described:

1. Changing the distributed existing city management to the integrated, transparent, efficient

and developmental city management along with using the advanced technologies in the

city management and local government transparency contexts.

2. Moving toward an increase in the potentialities, capacities, and internal and external

investments of the City of Qazvin in order to develop public welfare and city growth.

3. Improving the city of Qazvin position among the first 10 cities of the province, as well as

representing the city at national and international levels.

4. Developing awareness in a way to understand of the changing passive to active citizens

who establish civic culture and participate in their local communities in order to improve

city identity.

5. Improving the current economic, social, cultural, environmental and physical, aspects of

the city of Qazvin.

6. Creating a balanced, unified, understanding, and interactional circumstance in the Qazvin

urban region, including all towns and rural areas existing in the threshold of the city of

Qazvin.

Based on the finalized vision of the city of Qazvin CDS, primarily, general goals of the plan were:

i) To create a city with high management.

ii) To create a sustainable city.

iii) To create a city with active economic.

iv) To create a city with self-identity.

The process developing the visions in the Qazvin strategic planning has been illustrated in the

following image.

The results of analyzing city development strategies plan of the city of Qazvin (2008) have shown,

the city has four objectives (2007, p. 3):

i) Qazvin’s CDS was defined as the process of depicting a vision for the future, which

action plans were drawn from. The focus of Qazvin’s CDS was on five core points:

strengthening its economic competitiveness; poverty reduction; city environment

12 primiarly visions

Upper and lower plans

Evaluatoin and re-

assessment

Prioritize

visons

Global experinces

Interview with people, officals and academics

(including reduced exposure to natural hazards); infrastructure development; master

(comprehensive) planning; and financial sustainability;

ii) The CDS applied a broad range of stakeholders’ participation from all sections of the

city. The product of the CDS was a development strategy, designed to evolve as

implementation proceeds and as the city’s competitive position changes.

iii) The CDS was incorporated in the master (comprehensive) plan. It was expected that

the CDS contributes to the economic and social development and enhance the city

competitiveness. It created a sustainable mechanism for stakeholders’ consultation and

public input in the decision- making processes.

iv) Evaluation of earlier CDSs showed that the economic analysis, which underlines the

basis for a realistic vision for the city, was often the weakest element of the strategy. It

was important to employ professionals with good economic experience and technical

competence to undertake this task, to assemble and project appropriate and reliable

economic data at the city level.

To prepare the CDS plan seven main tasks have addressed that were undertaken in the

planning process of CDS. The following tasks were identified below:

i) To collect data and focus on the key priority areas, based on the main CDS themes. These

themes were:

To review and assess urban plans and strategies to avoid duplication and

inconsistencies, and to understand the strengths and weaknesses;

To review and assess infrastructure plans to understand the mobilization and

viability of city finance and to make recommendations to the city based on this

assessment;

To conduct economic development study in collaboration with expert stakeholders

to analyze the city’s economic position and its structural changes; the key sectors

of the economy, as well as the social and cultural characteristics of the city to

identify the institutional context of economic activities in the city, and the

conditions of the citizen’s access to health, education, water, and other urban

amenities;

To conduct urban poverty study to identify the poor segment, their characteristics

and status;

To conduct urban environment study to understand and assess the condition of the

city environment; and

To conduct financial sustainability study to ensure the mobilization of adequate

finance to facilitate implementation of strategies and proposed action plans.

ii) To provide the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis to

consider the interests of all residents and stakeholders to formulate a realistic vision of the

city and to develop the city strategies. The future vision posed the question of “What does

Qazvin do for Iran and the world?”

iii) To analysis Stakeholders and citizens’ view in order:

To prepare a stakeholders’ participation plan to identify and analyze the

stakeholders’ profile and contributions, and to devise a suitable approach to involve

stakeholders in the planning process;

To coordinate all interested citizens at two general consultation meetings in the city

as well as to organize three rounds of stakeholders’ participation sessions; and

To devise and apply creative participatory methods for more effective consultations

with key stakeholders.

iv) To develop the CDS plan, based on participatory in nature and collaborative approach

at all stages of the planning process, through the following initiatives;

To identify and engage the key stakeholders, and establish the city CDS working

group amongst those who are interested and responsible to the stakeholders to

follow and oversee the work of the consultants;

To create specialized consultative groups;

To create a city forum to assemble the consultative groups; and

To establish the national committee including the representatives of the urban

planning deputy of the Ministry and local authorities.

v) To undertake a strategy development and the action plans in collaboration with the city’s

CDS working group to ensure that the main themes and city vision were in tandem.

vi) To implement, monitor and evaluate the plan to:

To know that the implementation of strategies was the target of the CDS;

To devise an effective monitoring and evaluation system for CDS; and

To monitor the implementation of strategies and to make adjustments as necessary.;

and

vii) To train and to develop capacity building such as on-site training, workshops and

national training seminars.

According to these tasks, consensus vision (Sharestan Consulting Engineers, 2009, p. 72)

for Qazvin has been defined which has included six statements:

i) Qazvin was to develop a unified city including Qazvin city, peripheral counties and

habitats, with an independent identity in harmony with Qazvin. The city should be a good

combination of urban life and green nature, spirited and healthy originated from its surrounding

gardens, foothills and garden-ways; ii) with a developed industry, science-based, a progressive

technology in harmony with a healthy environment; iii) a center for diversified academic activities,

a center for science and technology production, a base for the provision of medical and health

expertise and services; iv) reliance on sustainable financial sources, collaboration of the

municipalities, cooperation and participation of people, and fair distribution of urban services and

free from poverty; v) a city that enjoys efficient public transportation and developed

communication system; and vi) preserving the religious and national heritage, a center for business

services and tourist attraction.

Furthermore, the results showed that the city should implement the CDS through a process

which includes: task hierarchy, time frame and resources, expected impacts and indicator of

achievement, E&M, and conflict resolution process. A method comprising the three hierarchal

sections for the CDS implementation was also proposed:

i) City forum: The city forum had the same structure as the one established during the

process of planning. The city forum was held annually for the purpose of hearing the reports

of the steering committee. At this important meeting, all proposals of the steering

committee pertaining to the city’s visions and strategies (and possibly guidelines) were

renewed, reviewed and approved. The numbers of meetings hold during each time interval

was based on necessity.

ii) Steering committee: The steering committee hold monthly meetings in which the reports

of the secretariat about the activities related to development strategy, implementation plans,

and the results of monitoring were reviewed. It also offered the necessary instructions as

well.

iii) Secretariat: The secretariat was a constantly active body of a three member workgroup

which met every week to discuss progress. These workgroup members were assigned or

changed by the steering committee.

Interestingly, the results also showed that the CDS proposed hands-on learning for the local

staff and revealed some efforts in training for capacity building which are discussed as follows:

i) The completed programs;

To organize training workshops at the local and national level;

The consultant held two workshops in Qazvin to attract more public participation in

realizing the plan. One of the most important objectives of these workshops was to improve public

and expert knowledge on the relevant concepts and fields of CDS. The first workshop was held on

11th of August, 2009 where three scientific lectures were delivered to an audience of

100participants from different institutions, traders, local people, organizations and NGOs. In

addition, six technical workgroups were conducted to solicit the people’s views on the economic,

social, physical and environmental fields. The second workshop was organized on 3rd of October

2009 in Qazvin. In this workshop, two scientific lectures were delivered on the development of

political issues in Qazvin and the manner in which of the Qazvin’s CDS was formulated.

To organize technical workgroups in each sector;

During the planning process, several trained technical experts were involved in the

meetings of the four specialized workgroups of environment, economy, social and physical studies.

These experts were competent in their area and led the discussions on the sectoral issues at stake.

To conduct on-the-job training;

On the job training were conducted at appropriate times during the meetings or public

gatherings. Participants had the opportunity to receive information and training from experts who

have theoretical and practical experiences of the plan on the relevant issues.

ii) The ongoing programs;

Organizing training workshops for the professionals in each section of the research was

one of the items on the agenda. However, this workshop has not been held yet due to bureaucratic

problems. However, the consulting engineers were willing to organize the workshops after the plan

formulation. The consultant suggested the training programs to be held in four important fields,

namely concepts and experiences, environmental studies, social studies, and economic studies.

iii) Recommendation for continuous training

CDS was a dynamic process that involves continuous planning, evaluating and monitoring

up to the realization of the vision. Hence, the supporting training programs and capacity building

were continued nonstop as well. For this purpose, the secretariat involved directed the training

programs up to the realization of the objectives to ensure CDs implementation was carried out

effectively.

Acknowledgment: This study was funded through a research grant from the Ministry of Higher

Education, Malaysia under the Transdisciplinary Research Grant Scheme (TRGS), 2016 (Grant

no. 203.PPBGN/67610001).

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